The research in the Hormiga laboratory focuses on the systematics and evolutionary biology of spiders, with emphasis on orbweavers and their close relatives (Orbiculariae). We use morphological, molecular and behavioral characters to reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships of our study groups. We tackle questions that span from species level taxonomic problems, addressed using a monographic approach, to intra and interfamilial phylogenetic relationships. We have an active fieldwork program that has taken us around the world in search of our study organisms. Our most recent fieldwork has been carried out in several countries of the Neotropical region, Madagascar and Equatorial Africa, Australia and New Zealand. We also use comparative phylogenetic methods to study more general questions such as the evolution and diversification of web architecture, the evolution of sexual size dimorphism or the patterns of insular diversification and colonization in oceanic archipelagoes.

Click on the following links to read more about some of our ongoing projects:

Dimitrov, D. and G. Hormiga. 2011. An extraordinary new genus of spiders from Western Australia with an expanded hypothesis on the phylogeny of Tetragnathidae (Araneae). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 161: 735-768. (doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.2010.00662.x)

Dimitrov, D., Benjamin, S., and G. Hormiga. 2009. A
revised phylogenetic analysis for the genus Clitaetra Simon, 1889 (Araneoidea, Nephilidae) with the first description of the male of the Sri Lankan
species Clitaetra thisbe Simon, 1903. Bulletin
of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 159(6): 301-323. (doi:10.3099/0027-4100-159.6.301).

Hormiga, G., F. Alvarez-Padilla and S.P. Benjamin.
2007.
First records of extant Hispaniolan spiders of the families Mysmenidae,
Symphytognathidae and Ochyroceratidae (Araneae), including a new
species of Ochyrocera. American Museum
Novitates
3577: 1-21.

Lopardo, L., G. Hormiga and A. Melic. 2007.
Spinneret
spigot morphology in synaphrid spiders
(Araneae, Synaphridae), with comments on the systematics of the family
and description of a new species of Synaphris Simon
1894 from Spain. American Museum Novitates, 3556:
1-26.

Hormiga, G. 2003. Weintrauboa,
a new genus of pimoid spiders from Japan and adjacent islands, with
comments on the monophyly and diagnosis of the family Pimoidae and the
genus Pimoa (Araneoidea, Araneae). Zoological
Journal of the Linnean Society, 139: 261-281. Download PDF